A Donald Trump presidency throws many business plans into disarray. Consider the example of a medical technology company where I spent the day after the election. Our medtech client has spent years adapting both its products and commercial model to the Affordable Care Act and now…who knows? Trump spelled out very little about his healthcare plans, as with policies affecting many industries, and it’s impossible to say what will really happen. But dramatic change is certainly possible.​What is this company to do? Should it ratchet back long-term spending and just try to milk profits in the short-term? Should it go full-steam ahead? In our latest article for Forbes, we discuss two principles for dealing with any type of uncertainty.

The shock of Donald Trump’s upset win is settling in, and we look forward to innumerable post-mortems on how forecast models went astray. The assumption is that next time we’ll have more precise predictions. But what if that faith is misplaced? After all, missing forecasts happens all the time in the private sector, whether companies end up with a runaway hit or a total bust. What can we learn from Trump’s stunner that won’t just tweak our prediction models, but cause us to fundamentally re-think them?

With more and more companies adding “jobs to be done” to their innovation tool kits, the amount of misinformation about Jobs Theory has grown enormously. Clayton Christensen – the Harvard Business School professor credited with popularizing the theory – has repeatedly spoken of the need to get the theory right and to be careful in how we use the terms associated with the theory. If we’re not clear about the boundaries of the theory and how we use words such as “jobs,” he warns, the theory can lose its predictive power and its utility. In the spirit of keeping the theory well-defined, we’ve decided to bust three common myths we’ve heard about “jobs to be done”:

Myth #1: “Jobs to be done” is just another way of saying “voice of the customer.”

Myth #2: Jobs theory isn’t compatible with personas.

Myth #3: “Jobs to be done” is only useful for developing new products.

Keeping up with customer demand is getting harder and harder. More than half of new products fail, and those that really move the needle are even more unlikely. While businesses may be struggling to understand what tomorrow’s customers want, the need to do so will only continue to grow more pressing. Customers will continue to demand more and more, and they’ll let the world know quickly if your new solutions don’t meet expectations. Competitors will continue coming up with strategies to undercut your prices, add new features, and slowly steal away market share. Startups will offer customized products and on-demand services that reduce demand for traditional offerings.​Corporate futurists are one way that companies will respond to these increasing market pressures. Futurists have the tough job of looking at social, technological, and economic trends from across industries and creating a view of how those forces will impact the direction your business needs to head. Unfortunately, most organizations aren’t in a position to add futurists to their ranks. At least not successfully. We’re seeing that companies are having a difficult time bridging the divide between customer insights and strategic planning, yet that’s exactly the area in which futurists would need to sit.

In a recent article for Forbes, we looked at several strategies for closing the research-to-strategy gap and integrating important trends into the product development process. These include creating a common innovation language that is used cross-functionally, mapping trends to specific use cases, and integrating a defined transfer plan into your innovation process.

Companies are often frozen in place by an “iron triangle” of failure, risk, and learning. Even those with lofty ambitions for furthering innovation get tripped up by common business behaviors that, while innocuous on their own, create inadvertent roadblocks to new forms of growth. Although existing structures tend to be optimized for incremental innovation in the core, they often do little to extract positive lessons from failures and fully map out risks in new areas. While much may be invested in innovation, little is learned. Check out our new piece on Forbesto learn more about what holds back innovation.

This post was written by Stephen Wunker. To learn more about how New Markets helps companies build innovation capabilities, click here.

Just this week, T-Mobile announced Binge On, a free addition to the carrier’s Simple Choice plan that will allow subscribers to stream unlimited video from providers like Hulu, HBO, and Netflix without it counting against their data usage. T-Mobile Binge On is the latest piece of the company’s three-part strategy to take on market leaders Verizon and AT&T. In ourrecent piece for Forbes, we look at T-Mobile’s strategy for using its limited assets to make a play for more market share.

Since the open innovation craze swept the business community in the early 2000s, idea competitions have taken hold at a number of companies. While these competitions tend to bring in thousands of new ideas, most end up getting discarded. In our recent piece for Forbes, we look at what’s wrong with the idea competition approach, instead promoting innovation processes that revolve around growth platforms. We look at how some of the world’s leading companies have used growth platforms to create more stable innovation platforms that harvest only the categories of ideas that can be immediately put to good use. We also explore how you can choose the growth platforms that will fit your own innovation efforts.

From startups to large corporations, building a culture of innovation is high on the list of priorities for most companies. There’s enormous potential that can be unlocked by fostering creativity among the employees who know the ins and outs of your industry and your company better than anyone. But creating that culture is about more than adding a ping pong table, a few beanbag chairs, and some bright colors. In our recent piece for Forbes, we look at five strategies that companies can use to build a culture of innovation. From choosing the right type of innovation to focus on to empowering your workforce, we explore how companies from a range of industries have powered their innovation initiatives.

TechCrunch recently hosted its Boston Pitchoff, giving eight startup finalists a chance to pitch their businesses in front of a panel of VCs and tech journalists. Clique Chic - a website that gives members access to designer clothes and a personal stylist - won the competition and will advance to the final Disrupt NY competition later this spring.

The competition boasted healthcare wearables, social networking apps, gamified education tools, and even a foray into personalized medicine. Amidst this heavy competition, Clique Chic demonstrated that it's the business model - not the buildup - that makes a startup successful.

To learn more about the featured startups and to see what strategies set Clique Chic apart, check out our piece on Forbes.​This post was written by David Farber. To learn more about how New Markets Advisors helps companies enter new markets, click here.

For the past few years, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs have been flocking to Kickstarter to seek the funding they need to get their ideas off the ground. The crowdfunding site has given these innovators a platform to truly embrace the Lean Startup principles that companies large and small have used to launch breakthrough innovations. By putting the core of the Lean Startup practice to use – including getting cheap, early prototypes in front of real people, gathering feedback, and iterating based on that feedback – these entrepreneurs successfully funded over 22,000 projects in 2014 alone.

The most successful campaigns have shown us that winning also depends on how successfully you can utilize familiar platforms and growing trends, how significantly you can reduce trial costs and pain points, and how concretely you can demonstrate tangible value. We have extracted some of the key innovation lessons that can help companies – regardless of their size – better understand what they can do to increase their chances of success in launching new products and services.

The Swasthya Slate packs a remarkable amount of electronics within a single diagnostic device. The Slate can take an electrocardiogram, monitor urine, and diagnose a range of serious conditions, all for a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional machines. Moreover, the Slate's simple interface enables low-skilled technicians to use the device, and communication with central servers allows for decision-support algorithms to recommend potentially appropriate treatments for patients being diagnosed.

There is no remarkable new technology in the Slate. Indeed, that's partly the point. Through packaging off-the-shelf parts in a straightforward-to-use package, the Slate aims for low-cost simplicity. The accuracy of its readings is reportedly 99% as good as far more expensive machines. Yet the way regulation, purchasing, and usage of these devices occurs in developed economies precludes the Slate's usage there. Instead, the Slate has been invented and is being rolled out in India. Read the Forbes article to learn more about the device and the disruptive innovation it represents.

Many companies are not doing enough to fend off low-cost rivals. They worry that adopting a down-market strategy could ultimately harm their brand. At the same time, young customers who are establishing roots could become valuable, long-term customers. Is the risk worth the reward?

Our new piece for Forbes looks at five of the strategies employed by companies that have successfully made the shift down market. We also explore how Mercedes-Benz is faring with its recent foray into the entry-level luxury car market.

The Innovator's Dilemma, the seminal book by my mentor Clayton Christensen, describes how companies focus tightly on their biggest, most important customers, to the extent that they ignore alternatives that would be more appropriate to the bulk of the market. Then something happens -- new technologies, business models, or regulations -- that creates "disruptive innovation" which upends the industry, giving the ignored portion of the market a new way to consume the offering, and the old incumbents become relegated to the top tier of the market chasing customers into a dead end.​For health insurance carriers, sick and costly patients have been one set of those important customers, and large employers have been a distinct set. The carriers haven't wanted to enroll sick patients, but once these people become subscribers the carriers have been highly incented to manage their costs. These patients have become a major focus of innovation efforts. On the other side of the business, the big employers who pay for insurance have been key customers to win, and carriers have sought to become closer to them.

Healthcare kiosks have come a long way since the creaking, dust-coated blood pressure monitors that long populated drug stores. A new wave of kiosks offers the capability to reach neglected populations, improve diagnosis rates, monitor chronic conditions, and link curious patients with integrated programs that reach them back in their home environments. The kiosks are also creating a new industry with high barriers to entry, and they can have a substantial effect on how healthcare innovations are marketed. To explore five ways that these kiosks may have big impacts, read my piece for Forbes.

Ideas can be the easiest part of innovation. With a rigorously defined problem and a structured approach to problem-solving, teams usually have no issues generating a long list of solid ideas and establishing some priorities.​The problem lies in what comes next. Three scenarios occur time and again to defeat exciting concepts. Recognizing their dynamics, and taking a few simple steps to avoid them, can vastly improve the odds that an intriguing concept will become a real business. Read about these scenarios in my piece for Forbes.